Tuesday, November 23, 2010
A Nuance
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Thanks and Reminders
Thursday, June 17, 2010
The Blogger and The Scholar
- Educating the minds and spirits of students
- Advance truth and knowledge
- Extend the blessings of learning
- Develop friends for the University and for the Church
Educate the minds and spirits of students within a learning environment that
- increases faith in God and the Restored Gospel,
- is intellectually enlarging,
- is character building, and
- leads to a life of learning and service.
The Lord wants you to educate your minds and hands, whatever your chose field. Whether it be repairing refrigerators, or the work of a skilled surgeon, you must train yourselves. Seek for the best schooling available. Become a workman of integrity in the world that lies ahead of you. I repeat, you will bring honor to the Church and you will be generously blessed because of that training.
Neal's New Media Blog
Discussion
From the beginning of Neal's blog posts to the concluding post on landscape functions in film, his thought process as a writer has flourished. He has done extensive research and has had come across difficulties, not being able to get certain scenes from his Sjostrom DVD and others but he has been able to communicate with people outside of our classroom including Tom Gunning, the Chair for the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at The University of Chicago. His blog postings are frequent and not only does Neal responds well to peers blogs and his peers respond on his blog postings too which I think have helped him in his writing craftsmanship. Neal even dedicates a post where he includes comments from fellow classmates, Allison, Chris, and Heather and responds to their feedback. He is in touch with his readers.
Focus
The overall research of Neal's blog clearly focuses on landscape in film. He offers several different videos to show readers/viewers the impact that landscape has on film. Each blog post has sub headings that are easy for the reader to understand what he is about to discuss. One thing I have noticed from reading Neal's blog is that there is a clear thought pattern. He asks himself questions and then will answer them in future blog postings. He, in a way, posts his brainstorming which allows him to progress in his writing.
Cohesion
The posts relate well with each other and there is an overall flow of posting.
Post Variety
Neal narrates his writing process well in his postings as I have mentioned before. His main source of literature Victor Sjostrom's Terje Vigen is linked well with his writing process and he refers back to it throughout his postings. He profiles Tom Gunning in a post where he displays their e-mail conversations and how Gunning has helped shaped his project. Neal frequently in each post refers his readers back to his hub post and reformulated hub post which lead to the overall creation of his concluding post. He includes current event posts and even examined copyright laws on uploading film found in this post.
Personality
Neal does not separate himself from his writing. His thought processes are laid out well within his posts and he even in one post expresses his personal love for landscape and the outdoors. As a reader, he comes off as a person that I could have both scholarly and informal conversations with which gives the author more appeal.
Currency and History
Neal had the challenge of being the only one in our class to look at landscape and film and literature. Other classmates focused on civil disobedience, the sublime, and online identity, or a mixture of the three. I think that Neal accomplished this task of grounding his writings in historical film.
Sources
The main literary source is well analyzed throughout Neal's blog postings and he makes connections to it and his personal research. He takes his sources from all different areas: scholars, literature, and youtube to display a variety of context.
Interactivity
Neal engages scholars who are familiar with his topic and classmates are interested in his research and provide useful feedback for him to continue in his studies. I have linked Neal in some of my previous blog posts for the useful feedback he has given me and as mentioned previously, Neal responds well with his classmates. He has a very high level of interactivity.
Community
A link to Diigo and other bookmark tabs are listed on Neal's sidebars. He also has avoided isolated work by demonstrating connectivity with readers.
Analysis
Throughout Neal's posts he provides firm analysis on film and literature. In his post on "The landscape of landscape and film", Neal analyzes a text entitled Cinema by Tom Gunning. He provides quotes from the literature, provides his own feedback and then links his findings in Cinema to other research he has accumulated.
Length
I think that some of Neal's blog posts seem long but only because of the font size. I think that they will draw readers in because of the media content, the way he forms his quotes and analysis. The format of his blog postings allows readers to easily read through his thoughts and writings.
Links
There are links everywhere in the post! This can be a bad thing and a good thing. In ways I see so many links that I don't know which ones I should click on and then I end up overlooking many of them. It is important to link previous posts and research but I do think that Neal links extensively throughout his postings.
Media
Media? Oh no media on this blog post! Absolute sarcasm right there. Neal uses media as his main source for each post. Media, film, drives his research and he frequently embeds videos for his viewers to watch in order to let them visualize and understand what he is aiming at in his writing. His blog posting on June 1 links four videos for viewers to watch linking the landscape to the narrative using Victor Sjostrom's early films as his case study.
Design
I would have liked to see Neal's blog with more of a landscape and new media feel. Maybe have a piece of landscape as his background. I also think his pictures illustrated his topics of discussion.
Quantity
Neal definitely has enough blog posts that have allowed the reader to regularly follow the blog.
Overall I think Neal did a wonderful job at fulfilling our assignment to take a topic and discuss it in a new media aspect. I have enjoyed reading his thoughts and as a reader of his work, I have been offered new insight into the importance of landscape in film.
A Thoreauvian Vision Coming to Pass
I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave's government also. All men recognize the right of revolution...the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government when its tyranny or its inefficient are great and unendurable.
Thoreau wrote this text for all people in all places. The Zapatista battle has also been a battle of peaceful protest. A "peaceable revolution," Thoreau states, is "if a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood." The Zapatistas have partaken in Thoreau's ideology of peaceful revolution. Since 1994, the Zapatista army has abstained from using their weapons for violence. Instead, they have been determined to fight their war through words. Words relaying their actions and messages. The Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT) has greatly assisted in spreading the Zapatista message through using FloodNet software and other forms of ECD like Virtual Sit-Ins and Hacktivism.
Shortly after the attacks, Dominguez was brought into questioning, UCSD placing him under surveillance to see if any criminal charges could be placed for a professor that had just recently given tenure. Placed under scrutiny by his own "government", Dominguez "educated" his students and others by "serving the state with [his] conscience, and so necessarily [resisting] it for the most part" to be "commonly treated as [an enemy]." Through their protest, they "[refused] allegiance to, and [resisted], the government [UCOP]." Letters were written all over the globe in support for Dominguez's actions. Students and faculty performed a silent protest on campus in support of Dominguez and protesting the right to academic freedom, declaring their virtual protest as a new media form of art.
Reflecting & Moving Forward
As I continue my focus on writing about Electronic Civil Disobedience (ECD) and tying it into Henry David Thoreau’s essay on “Civil Disobedience”, it has somewhat come to my attention that my more formal blog postings that I have somewhat failed at completely linking my primary text with my primary focus.
The beginning of my blog postings centered around Thoreau and his relation to social networking like Twitter and what his views would be today as technology has progressed. I then ventured on to discuss more about how civil disobedience has been seen throughout American history since the writing of “Civil Disobedience” and since then my main focus has been discussing the formation, background, and ins and outs of ECD and the Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT). Mentioning Thoreau here and there to try to maintain somewhat of a connection, my literary focus has not been as demonstrated through my postings. I have been faced with the challenge of introducing my readers to an unpopular subject matter, electronic civil disobedience, and defining the terms and background. In doing so that my readers are capable of learning and understanding all that I have come to learn and understand through my research. Action is absolutely apparent in all context of writing. Activists are modernizing the traditional.
Whether action is taken in the traditional civilly disobedient way or by a virtual aspect, the point is that action IS being taken. Stefan Wray said in his essay that “The Internet infrastructure [now] is not only a means toward or a site for communication, but the Internet infrastructure itself becomes an object or site for action.” A site for action, an opportunity to display protest and voice. Taking advantage of this action provides activists with the literal feel that ONE person certainly can make a difference and can have their views heard and seen within a new medium.
The information I have given you will act as a source of reference as in my next post I solely analyze and compare Henry David Thoreau’s essay “Civil Disobedience” with the EDT and ECD. Below I have included my more formalized blog postings that ought to act as a guide:Wednesday, June 16, 2010
The Rise of the Digital Zapatista
CD & ECD
Electronic Civil Disobedience (ECD) involves powerful “symbolic gestures” that enhance protest and relay messages for equality, rights of the people, and other liberties. ECD was first proposed in 1994 by the Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), which some reformers used to transition to the Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT). The CAE gave the proposed practice of ECD its name aligning the concept of electronic civil disobedience with that of civil disobedience, in an effort to draw legitimacy from the legendary leaders such as Henry David Thoreau, author of “Civil Disobedience”. Civil disobedience involves trespassing and blockading as tactics for protest. ECD involves itself in these tactics by conforming them in a new setting and in a slightly different aspect. Hacktivism, virtual sit-ins, and the use of the software FloodNet are tactics used by the EDT in sending messages of ECD protest. I have spoken about these forms in my previous blog posts: The Zapatistas and Electronic Disturbance Theater and An Info-War, a Virtual Sit-In, and Hacktivists...United for a Cause.
ECD in Recent Times
As I have mentioned before, ECD first arose in assisting in the battle in Chiapas, Mexico and the Zapatistas fighting for equality and the sanctification for human rights. In recent news, there have been recent publicized forms of ECD within the school systems in California. Dr. Ricardo Dominguez, a professor of electronic civil disobedience at University of California-San Diego, as mentioned in earlier posts as a co-founder of EDT and assisting the battle in Chiapas, Mexico, posed a virtual sit-in with his students towards the president of the university. Dominguez and students on March 4 utilized both traditional forms of civil disobedience and ECD to demonstrate protest towards the increased college tuition fee at UCSD. Students, interviewed by the school’s newspaper, The Guardian, examined the relationship between physical and virtual protest. Holly Eskew, a student of Dominguez said, “On March 4, when about 400 of us and then some did the virtual sit-in, at the same time we had our real bodies protesting. We are reaching the time when we can compare our real bodies to our digital bodies and online environment.” The term "digital bodies" suggests different digital identities, evolving our physical bodies to the cyber world, something my colleagues Becca and Heather are interested in writing about. The body in relation to technology like bodies to machines, EDT has placed a notion of "embodiment" under question. They have sought to understand specific possibilities for establishing presence in the cyber world that is both politicized and collective.
The goal of EDT is to take known forms and then subvert their message in order provoke thought, discussion, and emotion. The utilizing of new media and art allows EDT to take on a more modern form of Thoreau’s more traditional “Civil Disobedience”. Dominguez and other EDT members contributed to the EZLN’s fight for the indigenous people of Mexico. Crafting themselves as Digital Zapatistas, they “attacked” websites of the Mexican government and US governments. These “attacks” were never effective…only affective—something Dominguez stresses in interviews. By digitalizing the message of the EZLN, harm was never physically seen even though the government posed threats against them. FloodNet and Virtual Sit-Ins such as the one executed against the UC system for which Dominguez is under investigation for are ways of protest that send forth messages. The key difference between a virtual sit-in and a sit-in is that a virtual sit-in must be open and transparent. My previous post has discussed this in relation to “Distrubed Denial of Service Attack” (DDoS) that Dominguez has been accused of launching.
UCSD hired Dominguez on the basis of his work in ECD in 2005. He teaches his students about ECD, having them regulate and utilize an online lab called b.a.n.g. lab, a place for numerous art projects and discussion among the UC system. He was granted tenure in 2009. Those threatening to take away his job are the same who granted him tenure. He was granted tenure for his usage of FloodNet and the usage of Virtual Sit-Ins. They hired Dr. Dominguez because of his familiarity with ECD and EDT and clearly found so much interest in his research and studies to have a class dedicated solely to ECD and a speacilist to teach it. They clearly knew what he was capable of--launching virtual "attacks", hacktivism, utilizing the internet for protest. So when these virtual sit-ins and software like FloodNet are being utilized by Dominguez and his students to send across an important message, the UCOP decides to shut down Dominguez's computer and internet connection, accuse him of a DDoS attack, and see if they can press criminal charges against him. These previous sit-ins were praised and yet what makes this one so different? This is a question that I asked The Guardian newspaper and have yet to receive a response from the author. A professor and students protesting an increase in college fees. When stated like that, it seems commendable, understandable. So why is it that protesting against the fee increase lands a professor under criminal watch? Dominguez asks the same question, “[It would be] an unwise choice for them to attempt to stop academic research and artistic research that I was awarded for in past years,” he said. “Why now? What is different and what does the administration want?” UCSD administrators say they honor academic freedom, but need to look into any potential criminal activity.
Questioning and Support
As Dominguez was attended a meeting on campus to be questioned, students and several other supporters gathered by the Silent Tree on library walk at the unviersity. Dominguez, void of legal representation, fielded questions and chose to postpone the meeting. Students and supporters wore white masks with X's on them to represent the university's attempt to silence academic freedom. Something UCSD administrators said they honored... Dominguez rejoined the supporters, giving them thanks and listened as they read letters that spanned the globe, which voiced solidarity, alliance, and outrage at the administration’s criminalization of his work.
The digital Zapatista rose again and along the way educated this generation's youth of the importance of ECD, letting voices be heard and teaching students artistic ways to politicize using new media. As Thoreau once said:
The law will never make men free. It is men who have got to make the law free.
...and that is exactly what Dominguez, the Zapatistas, EDT, students, and virtual sit-in activists are trying to do.